House-proud frogs boast about their burrows

If you thought estate agents knew how to sell a house, take a look at male Emei music frogs. They attract a mate by singing the praises of the burrows they have dug. Other than humans, they are the only animal known to advertise their homes in their calls.

Males of the species Babina daunchina are famous for their musical call, which sounds like an ascending scale. They live on the fringes of ponds in central China, where males dig nests.

Yezhong Tang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Chengdu and his team found that males calling from inside a nest used lower and longer calls than usual. When the researchers recorded typical calls and “nest calls”, and played both back to females, they found that over 70 per cent of females moved towards the nest calls.

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Carl Gerhardt of the University of Missouri in Columbia says that in most species males don’t advertise resources like nests in their calls, perhaps because doing so would attract the attention of other males with the strength to take the nest from them.